Archive for July, 2006

Unshelved

Monday, July 17th, 2006

There’s a comic strip out there that every librarian should be reading, whether via RSS or by visiting their website. It’s called Unshelved and it is set in a public library. Here’s a quick overview:

“Writer Gene Ambaum (the made-up name of a real-life librarian) and co-writer and artist Bill Barnes have been publishing since February 16, 2002. Some of the stories are made up, some of them are based on real life, and some are absolutely true stories sent to us from our readers. And the stranger the story, the more likely it is to be true.”

This excellent comic strip has been around for over four years now, and they’ve got book of collected comics for sale, as well as shirts, hats, jackets, book bags, and prints of your favorite comics. Be sure to visit their site and Support Your Local Library!

Quality RSS Feeds

Wednesday, July 12th, 2006

Most of us know how useful RSS feeds can be. Well, I recently found out about a collection of high-quality RSS feeds that should be bookmarked by all librarians: Tapesty Comics! It has been well documented that humor is a critical element to health, well-being, and even contentment in the workplace. From that point of view, Tapestry Comics has what you need. There are 174 feeds listed! Do you like Dilbert or Garfield or PvP or Unshelved? You can subscribe to the RSS feeds and get them in your aggregator. No more worrying about missing a day (okay, I’m sure we don’t really worry about missing, but it’s nice to catch up) and you can view them when you get the time. They even have quick-clicks to add them to your Bloglines and My Yahoo! accounts.

With 174 different comic strips to choose from, I’m sure you’ll find SOMEthing at Tapestry Comics that will brighten your day via RSS!

Comparing Databases

Thursday, July 6th, 2006

Is your library evaluating the databases you subscribe to? Do you wonder how similar some databases are? I recently found just the site you need while reading posts on LibRef-L. It’s at http://lib-bladea2.lib.sfu.ca:8088/CUFTS/compare.cgi and it’s amazing what a couple clicks will do for you.

All you have to do is pick the two databases to compare from their extensive lists of databases and they’ll run a journal-title comparison for you. First in the results is a list of journals that are in both databases, along with the start and end dates of citations and full-text articles. That in itself is great, bu then they do the same thing for journals that are only in one, and then only in the other. And at the very bottom is the summary with the numbers of titles in each category.

VERY helpful for assessing whether you’re spending your money to your best advantage.